Noam Chomsky: Why the Republican Party Is a Threat to Human Survival

Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)

Noam Chomsky: Why the Republican Party Is a Threat to Human Survival

By Sarah Lazare [1] / AlterNet [2]

January 26, 2016

  Renowned scholar and activist Noam Chomsky declared this week that the GOP and its far-right front-runners are "literally a serious danger to decent human survival.”

    Speaking [3] with The Huffington Post on Monday, Chomsky cited the Republican Party’s refusal to tackle—or even acknowledge—the “looming environmental catastrophe” of climate change, thereby “dooming our grandchildren.”

    He went to rebuke the Republican party for its “abject service to private wealth and power” and dispossession of the poor.

    But Chomsky made it clear that his conviction that “the Republican Party has drifted off the rails” and must be stopped by no means amounts to an endorsement of Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton—who he has previously criticized [4] as hawkish and opportunistic.

    In fact, he told The Huffington Post that the United States has what amounts to a one-party system—with both Democrats and Republicans united by business interests. Yet, within those parameters, he argued, small differences do matter, given the immense power of the American political system.

  And Senator Bernie Sanders, Chomsky recently told [5] Mehdi Hasan of Al Jazeera’s UpFront show, “would--of the current candidates--be the one who would have, from my point of view, the best policies.”

  "I agree with him in a lot of things, not in other things," Chomsky said, calling him “basically a new dealer.”

   "I frankly think that in our system of mainly bought elections, he doesn't have much of a chance,” he continued. However, recent polling [6] in early primary states bodes well for Sanders, and one survey [7] found him more electable than Clinton when matched against Trump, Cruz, or Rubio.

   Whatever happens, Chomsky told Hasan, he plans to strategically vote against the GOP, which he says wants to “destroy the world.”

 Sarah Lazare is a staff writer for AlterNet. A former staff writer for Common Dreams, Sarah co-edited the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. Follow her on Twitter at @sarahlazare [8].

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Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/noam-chomsky-why-republican-party-threat-human-survival

Links:

[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/sarah-lazare-0
[2] http://alternet.org
[3] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/noam-chomsky-gop_us_56a66febe4b0d8cc109aec78
[4] http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/noam-chomsky-criticize-hillary-clinton-like-obama-118870
[5] http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/01/noam-chomsky-bernie-sanders-policies-election-160125180058899.html
[6] http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/why-there-media-blackout-bernie-beating-trump-polls
[7] http://maristpoll.marist.edu/110-cruz-and-trump-vie-in-ia-trump-nh-favorite-clinton-and-sanders-competitive/
[8] https://twitter.com/sarahlazare
[9] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Noam Chomsky: Why the Republican Party Is a Threat to Human Survival
[10] http://www.alternet.org/
[11] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

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